fun fun fun

Rating: 8/10 (19 July 2013)

OK, so yes its a special effects extravaganza involving giant robots (called jaeger) fighting giant monster aliens (called kaiju) from another dimension. Which sounds a little worrying especially when the trailers make it look like a longer mighty morphing power rangers episode. It had so much potential to be awful. Guillermo Del Toro (science fiction/fantasy/horror storyteller extraordinaire) of course was not going to let that happen. It turns out to be very entertaining and fun.
One important thing to mention to anyone not in the know is that this film is heavily indebted to the many Japanese films and TV series which tackle a similar giant robot/mecha suited subject. I think perhaps (not that I'm an expert) most notably the TV and film series Neon Genesis Evangelion. I imagine this is the sort of thing that inspired and influenced this film. Which of course is a great thing given how flipping good the first two film recaps have been. If you haven't seen any of this please go seek it out. Therefore it is a nice touch that one of the main characters in Pacific Rim is a Japanese women.
Most of the action is set in Hong Kong but unfortunately, while there is a Chinese Jaeger team and also a Russian team, both have very little screen time or speaking parts. Apart from the main team in the story - Mako and Raleigh, the team with the 2nd most focus is given to the rather bland father and son (Australian? - the accents were hard to define) team. I found myself not caring too much about them to be honest. Felt more for the Chinese and Russians who had much less characterisation. Perhaps the film producers felt that they needed to have a larger white male presence in the film to reflect the films probable viewing demographic. Which I'm sorry to say is just dull, lazy and boring. I'm sure this sort of consideration is necessary for any big expensive film to be given the green light but its sort of disappointing all the same.
The first few minutes of this film manage to do something quite impressive. In this very short time they manage to give a very accurate and believable summary of the first 7 years of the kaiju/human/jaegar war. 7 whole years told exceptionally skillfully in a couple of few minutes. This sets up the film beautifully.
Yes i said believable! How did they manage to make it seem realistic that huge monsters could rampage around major cities a la Godzilla? Plus the fact that said monsters originate from an interdimensional portal on the bottom of the pacfic ocean? I don't know either but they did.
The human interest stories are of course what make any film and the relationship between Mako and Stacker (Idris Elba's stern military leader) is quite compelling. A scene involving Mako's initial encounter with a Kaiju and then Stacker as a child is really quite poignant. The child actor plays the part so realistically (all strained breathing and crys) that you wonder if she thought it was actually happening.
Of course there's a whole lot of fun stuff too. Did i mention the giant robots fighting giant alien monsters? Well, its done well, you can actually follow what's happening and the there is invention and creativity in the fights. The special effects are of course top notch. Charlie Day's scientist character is a good laugh throughout the film. The 'drifting' concept (2 humans must share the 'neural load' of piloting a Jaegar and drifting is kind of like a mind meld where they share each other's minds and therefore memories) is used to good effect.
All in all this is as fun and intelligent a film can be considering its plot :) So go see!